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- Bryce Dessner
Aheym (Homeward) (2009)
- Chester Music Ltd (World)
Commissioned by Kronos Quartet for the Celebrate Brooklyn Festival. Premiere 12th March 2009 at the MusicNOW Festival and 18th July 2009 in Prospect Park, Brooklyn
- String Quartet
- 10 min
- 29th June 2025, Winterer-Foyer, Freiburg, Germany
Programme Note
Aheym means ‘homeward’ in Yiddish, and this piece is written as musical evocation of the idea of flight and passage. As little boys, my brother and I used to spend hours with my grandmother, asking her about the details of how she came to America. (My father’s family were Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia). She could only give us a smattering of details, but they all found their way into our collective imagination, eventually becoming a part of our own cultural identity and connection to the past. In her poem “Di rayze aheym,” the American-Yiddish poet Irena Klepfisz, a professor at Barnard in New York and one of the few child survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto, writes: “Among strangers is her home. Here right here she must live. Her memories will become monuments."
Aheym is dedicated to my grandmother, Sarah Dessner.
(c) Bryce Dessner
Aheym is dedicated to my grandmother, Sarah Dessner.
(c) Bryce Dessner
Media
Aheym
Kronos Quartet with Bryce Dessner
Scores
Score Sample
Reviews
The sensibility of his writing for string quartet is much the same as in his songs, and this translates into an incredibly interesting work.
9th December 2013
Discography
Aheym
- LabelAnti
- Catalogue NumberAnti 7296-2
- EnsembleKronos Quartet
More Info
- Bryce Dessner portrait concert and world premiere of violin concerto for chamber orchestra in Munich
- 4th April 2024
- The Munich Chamber Orchestra presents a portrait concert of Bryce Dessner on April 13, and later, on June 13 premieres Dessner’s Violin Concerto (chamber version) with soloist Pekka Kuusisto.
